Brent --
I just got off the telephone with my daughter in California who is deputy
director of social services in Oakland, who called to share her anguish at
the 40 per cent cuts her agency has just sustained, which put her in the
position of choosing who would be laid off. I shared with her my distress
at the cuts LVA has experienced. In the middle of our conversation, her
boyfriend in Alaska who runs a public defenders office, called for
commiseration on the cuts his office must enforce, which means he has to let
go 30 per cent of his staff.
Last night I had dinner with a good friend who runs the ER at a Peninsula
Hospital here in VA and he spent most of the dinner telling me about how
badly broken the medical system is.
There is something profoundly wrong with our priorities as a society and, as
historians, part of our pain comes, I think, from the knowledge that
decisions made today will bear bitter fruit for decades to come.
Let me join everyone else in thanking you and the others at LVA for long
hours, low pay, and the commitment to do the best with what is available.
-- Stephan
on 10/19/02 1:29 PM, Brent Tarter at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> Va-Hist, Va-Roots, Other Friends:
>
> Since the news of the consequences of the state budget cuts on the programs
> and services of the Library of Virginia was made public, subscribers to
> Va-Hist and Va-Roots have been very gracious in their compliments to the
> Library and its staff members for the services we have tried to provide.
> Some subscribers have gone off the list to send private messages, which are
> also very much appreciated.
>
> Alas, we are far past the point of being able to do anything about this
> circumstance except pick up the remaining pieces and hope that we can hold
> them together.
>
> This is my personal opinion, not to be confused with any official
> explanation:
>
> The state's entire budget has been in a serious crisis for more than two
> years. Remember the 2001 General Assembly session that failed to resolve the
> problem then? Well, after the recession began and as it worsened, things got
> even worse. For the last couple of years it has looked to me as if the
> Library was already operating at or perhaps even below a sustainable minimum
> budget. Many critical staff positions remained vacant for want to money to
> pay a salary. Many of our staff members worked long and unpaid extra hours
> to keep serving our many constituencies, among whom historians and
> genealogists are but a few. So much had already been cut out, including
> almost all routine operating funds, that when another round of big cuts came
> there was nothing left to cut but staff and programs.
>
> I cried more this week than in the whole preceding 50 years together as
> excellent projects and plans and colleagues and friends all around me fell
> one after another to the consequences of the arithmetic.
>
> We are all gratified by the kind words, and we certainly understand the
> frustration, but I cannot see that anything can be undone unless somebody
> brings us a good many millions of dollars this weekend and promises to
> repeat the gift every subsequent year.
>
> The many valuable resources available through the Library of Virgnia's web
> site will remain on line, including the extraordinary Digital Library
> Project images, as Elizabeth Roderick pointed out in a message yesterday.
> But please be patient and keep in mind that everything at the Library has
> been affected, and response time to requests of all kinds (telephone,
> e-mail, real mail, in person) will no doubt be slower because there will be
> fewer people and resources to do the work.
>
> $0.02 worth of private opinion from
>
> Brent Tarter
> The Library of Virginia
> [log in to unmask]
>
> Visit the Library of Virginia's web site at http:www.lva.lib.va.us
>
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